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6000 its not enough - for real historical battles we need 20000 or more.

An example:
Consular army's had 2 roman legions, 2 Socii legions called Ala, 2 roman Equites Alae a 200-400 men, 2 Socii Alae a 300-600 men and the Extraordinarii with 4 - 8 Socii Infantry cohortes and an Elite Cavalry Ala with 600 menpower.
The 2 roman legions (after Polybios) had 10 Hastati Manipuli a 120 men, 10 Principes Manipuli a 120 men and 10 Triarii Manipuli a 60 men. also 40 men Velites for every manipuli (alltogether 1200 Velites possible split in extry 10 units) - in this wise 40 units only for one of the roman legions without cavalry.
The Socii legions are organisated in City or tribe region cohorts with 400-600 men, fight possible in the same manipular tactic like the roman legions.

If they use the early republic manipuli system also in cohortes with 120 men Hastati - 120 men Principes, 60 men Triarii and 120 men Velites (BTW first used in spain from Scipio !!!) than we have the 480 men of the Marian cohort also in republic time and can see 10 cohort units for one roman legion.

The 10 Turmae a 30+6 men of the roman Alae = 360 men and maybe the same poser for the Socii Alae we have 2 roman Alae units, 4 Socii Alae units and 2 Extraordinarii Elite Cavalry Socii units - alltogether 8 units for the Cavalry in an consular army.

Well the stacks will be up to 40 units. Then you have unit multipliers. Example - in my current Russian DarthMod Napoleon campaign with x2 units the militia is 500, my line infantry are 400, Elites 320, Jager units(light infantry) 240, skirmishers 160, cavalry 120. Since I rely a lot on artillery(to counter the French) my stacks(20 units) in most cases don't exceed 5 000 and on the tactical map there's quite a bit of space left, and that's with units deployed 3-deep, mind you.

With the changed physics of Rome 2 you will want your units to be at least 5-deep, better 6-8. Phalanxes deployed 16-deep in normal formation, 8-deep was the "locked shields" supertight formation; hoplite phalanxes deployed from 8 to 20-deep.

That means you will have more than enough space to deploy your units and with the new maps(rumored to be about 5 times bigger, so around 9 sq km probably) your limiting factor will be your PC performance.

A lot will depend also on the maximum frontage that's hardcoded. For example if the maximum frontage is optimised for ultra units and you can handle say x4 unit multiplier, your formations will be deeper than what was historically true.

With a sufficiently powerful PC you will be able to recreate famous battles in the best scale, ten milimeters to the centimeter.

In fact, if the maps are a bit bigger than 3x3 km, you will have the space to recreate Cannae in all its gory glory.

Originally Posted by Hibernicus II

What's EB?

"I Eddard of the house Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, sentence you to die."

The basic army will consist of up to 40 units. on ultra scale, at 300 men per unit, that's 12,000 men in an army. If CA are going to make epic battles more functional, as I hope they are, then the engine should be able to handle at least 2 armies fielding this many troops at once, giving 24,000 men on the battlefield. They could go further, and have reinforcement armies bringing the total beyond 40,000 troops in one battle.

But yeah, the 2nd post in this thread is REALLY informed

♠ We Few, We happy few, We Band of Brothers ♠♠ For He who sheds His blood with me shall be my Brother ♠

I was wondering if there's any news from CA or anyone, about the size of the upcoming battles and the possibility of having reinforcements controlled by the AI, even from your own side.

There are some things I am concerned about:

1. What size will the legions be? Will we have 40 units in each army, or will we have bigger units instead (resembling cohorts, such as 480 men per unit)?

2. Will the battles reach 25.000 or even 30.000 men without lag? Because in previous TW games I had steady FPS around 40, but the game engine was lagging, causing the battles to be unplayable.

3. The last concern was already named, the reinforcement system. Will the old system of full reinforcing armies be re -implemented? This will, of course, be necessary to be able to play epic battles.

What do you guys know about these things? If anyone does, please share it in this thread!
This is the time to have an EPIC wargame. A real total wargame. Larger battlefields simply bigger battles, no 5000 vs 5000 anymore.

An Roman manipuli stand only 20 men to 6 deep, in Cannae 10 to 12, possible also 40 to 3 in an Saw line like the Triarii.

Thats the classical hoplit phalanx of the 5th cent in hellenistic times the Syntagma stay with 8 men deep not in line more in an rhombus formation!!!!

I am a little confused and shocked about the low knowledge in this point !!!

H.Balck

Oh really, so how about you enlighten us on the depth of the 160-man hastati/principes maniple(the overstrength legion) or the depth of the cohort?

The syntagma usually deployed 16-deep, meaning it was a 16x16 square. This allowed it to maneuver more rapidly and in the event the locked shields formation was needed, the second half-files, ranks 9-16 moved in the space between the first half-files, each file of 8 having about 50 cm of frontage. That's why the 9th ranker was a veteran soldier, comparable to a team leader. And the 16-deep was the "normal depth". IIRC at Magnesia Antiochus deployed his phalagites 32-deep, with two elephants between the taxeis.

BTW, what exactly do you mean when you talk about the rhombus formation of the syntagma?

Originally Posted by Hibernicus II

What's EB?

"I Eddard of the house Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, sentence you to die."

I fully support 20,000 per side if the map is big enough to really allow that to happen. As it is, I can line up my 8,000 men 20-30 deep when deploying within my initial zone, and I want my army to start in at least roughly the same formation as when they engage the enemy.

Am I the only here who actually prefers smaller-scaled battles? Besides practical concerns (framerate, battle length), I feel that with too many units, I lose control over my force: I can no longer keep tabs on each unit, I can only issue general orders and wait for the dust to settle. Two stacks of 6000 in a battle sounds plenty to me.

In Jacks Dev Diary that he did after the Carthage game play video he answered the question of how big unit size will be in Vanilla Rome 2 he said that it would be similar or the same as previous titles due to path finding issues of units of 400-500 men. I expect to see similar size battles as previous total war games with 40vs40 with unit sizes somewhere around 160-200 ish that would allow for somewhere between 6000-8000 troops on each side. We all know that shortly after the game is released that a number of mods will come out and one thing that they will address is size of units it will be interesting to see how the engine and peoples computers will handle 15000-20000 units per side by using mods.

Just to clarify something : They have never confirmed 40 units per army, they have confirmed 40 units per battle.

Unit sizes will be roughly the same as in Shogun 2 (Jack's vidcast).

It is possible to mod unit sizes in all warscape games, i can't see why they would remove it for Rome 2. Having enormous unit sizes will most likely cause problems - particularily in Siege battles. I guess that's why CA won't "officially" support bigger unit sizes.

Will the battles reach 25.000 or even 30.000 men without lag? Because in previous TW games I had steady FPS around 40, but the game engine was lagging, causing the battles to be unplayable.

Look not above, there is no answer there; Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer; Near is as near to God as any Far, And Here is just the same deceit as There.

And do you think that unto such as you; A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew: God gave the secret, and denied it me?-- Well, well, what matters it! Believe that, too.

"Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think, And at the same time make it sin to drink? Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus-- Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!" Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Just to clarify something : They have never confirmed 40 units per army, they have confirmed 40 units per battle.

Unmaking of Carthage, 2:10 min. Dominique Starr says "The total number of units you will be able to control in battle will be forty."

Besides, unit size up to 500 shouldn't be a problem, for field battles at least. With 40 units that's up to 20 000 per stack. If your PC can handle it, it won't be a problem to have more than one stack per side in battle.

Originally Posted by Hibernicus II

What's EB?

"I Eddard of the house Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, sentence you to die."

Unmaking of Carthage, 2:10 min. Dominique Starr says "The total number of units you will be able to control in battle will be forty."

Besides, unit size up to 500 shouldn't be a problem, for field battles at least. With 40 units that's up to 20 000 per stack. If your PC can handle it, it won't be a problem to have more than one stack per side in battle.

That's what i said. They've never said "You will be able to have 40 units in one army under one general".